


far from home

by half_a_league



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Multi, Non-Linear Narrative, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-06
Updated: 2014-04-06
Packaged: 2018-01-18 09:09:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1422583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/half_a_league/pseuds/half_a_league
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You’re an Ampora: the sea is salty, the moons are green and pink, and you’ve never been lucky in your short life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	far from home

**Author's Note:**

> Tags subject to change as the story progresses: characters and other relationships will be added with appearances as to not clutter their tags. title from [ "From Finner" by Of Monsters and Men ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZTsxAQXWys) . Violence and gore is situation-specific; e.g. fights between characters, not just scattered randomly. One instance of violence occurs between two future romantic partners and is non-consensual, but is not present in this chapter. the chapter containing that situation will be warned for; the moment is brief and also situation-specific. this work is currently beta'd.

“Are you pitch for me?” she asks, low and teasing, crowding close to your face, her claws trailing ever so gently down your chest. The threat is there, the sharpness, the heavy strength in her arms.

You can’t help the smirk, leaning in close to her, breathing in her air with every weighted sigh. “More pitch than coal.”

She squints and shoves herself closer. “More pitch than the sky between the stars?” she coos, and looks up at you between her eyelashes. She bites at her lip, a slip of white fang—pretty enough to look sweet, sharp enough to draw blood.

You wrap your arms around her, settling your hands on her hips, curling the weight of them over the sharp bone. She shifts, and lets out a pretty chirp, like a little bird.

“More pitch that the ocean down deep, where all the dark things are,” you say, and flare your fins, frame your face. A rumbling snarl starts deep in your throat.

You can feel their eyes on you still — the reeking ozone from their weapons freed from Strife decks, the intake of their own shaking breathing. How many of them are there? Half a dozen? A dozen?

She presses the answer into your mind, a sly sneaking smugness, curling cool and light against the tip of your tongue. _Eight_ , and the look in her eyes is gleeful.

She kisses like you’re a challenge, like she wants to tear you apart with just her fangs, like she wants the taste of deep purple in her mouth, thick and oceanic, full of salt: The color of the waves, when you’re looking up from below and the moons hang heavy in the sky. It smears enticingly against her lipstick and she growls, pressing herself against you like she can somehow become a part of you by the sheer force of her body against yours.

You kiss with your eyes open, and when she closes hers, sighing into your mouth like a benediction, the stillness hits you, a target sign, a light in the dark for you to aim for.

Ahab’s Crosshairs are not meant for close range combat. You have a pistol, for days like this, when your lovely Marquise presses you down to the very last line, and the air crackles when you pull it from your own Strife deck and fire.

She keeps kissing you, swaying in your arms and biting your lower lip open, blood cool as it runs down your chin, and you can see the way she stills for a moment after each shot.

There are six bullets, in your gun, and no time to reload. You are faster with Crosshairs, fingers like a strong wind when you change the shells for bullets; but even here, two steps away from death, you wouldn’t be fast enough.

The pistol hits the deck with a clattering bang, and the air slices itself into ribbons around your cutlass. She’s against your side now, crouched and laughing, the noise lost in the heavy wind and the snap of the none too distant sails. But her dice fall and clatter, a high hollow noise like bones rattling, shining wetly against the dark pier.

The two left, a darker blue than her, are young, barely in their second molt, and they tremble when they see the two of you, blades cutting the dark like the stars overhead: one grim, one laughing. They tremble like sails loose in a storm, but they hold their ground.

It can’t even be called a fight.

The ocean rages against gravity, fighting tooth and nail, sending crashing waves and long swells rumbling. You can taste the salt, your blood, the chalky wax lipstick, blue on your fingers when you wipe it away. Ahead, the last streaks of light disappear, old rockets with bad maintenance, but you’re sure discovery is impossible now. The streaks of white and gold fade away to a place far beyond where you have ever been. The mist, low and light, clings to your clothes, your face, your hair; and you feel damp and heavy and dirty, but pleased. Slowly, you lower your fins and let your lips hide your fangs again.

When you turn back, she’s rising from where she was crouched above a body, her fingers damp with a darker blood than hers, and she clips a slim silver watch chain to her belt and hides the accompanying watch away.

Your wild girl, with her hat askew and her face painted violet. She offers you another shark smile and pushes her hair out of her face. Later, you might offer to comb the tangles out of it, before you part ways for a while.

Later she might let you.

But for now, you approach, slowly, as if she was a wild beast, as if she was the ocean, stuffed into a rough grey skin, and you wet your handkerchief with your spit. One stroke at a time, you clean the blood away from her face, handling her slim pointed chin in one hand, turning her face to watch what little light there is hit the high bones of her cheeks, the thin sharp point of her nose.

“Let’s never do this again,” you tell her, as sternly as you can, knowing that you’re smiling again.

She laughs again and pulls away from you. “The kissing?” she asks, and tosses her hair, smirking at you in wild dark joy. “Or the fighting?”

“Perhaps both,” you say, and offer her your arm. The dinghy is waiting, the waves pushing it to bump against the dock, and out there, moored away from the shore are two ships looming in the dark. Home.

“I could do without the sappy confessions,” she says, and raises her hand to grasp yours, instead of taking your arm. She plays with the ring on your third finger, rubbing it with her thumb. Perhaps she’ll steal it again, like she sometimes does. It comes back with a new stone or a different band, or chipped or polished or scratched, but it always comes back.

The fluorite, cut flat with four sharp sides—a diamond shape—shines cerulean in the moonlight, and you can see faintly, when she swings her arms as she walks, the amethyst catching light; purple like her face, her mouth had been.

“You don’t want me to call you my palest diamond?” you ask, and bump her hip with yours. 

“You don’t want me to say that the stars are darker than my pity for you, and that the sand will never hold to the shade of pale I am for you?”

“I don’t need you to tell me,” she says, swinging your hand, lacing her fingers through yours. “I already know.”

She’s blue across her cheeks, the bridge of her nose, and she sneaks glances at you from the corner of her eye. She’s worn your ring for a little over a sweep, and she’s hot and cold in turns, climbing into your ‘coon with you at morning, ducking away from even the brush of your cloak. But shy throughout, and the sharp wrench of pity nags at you, tearing your bloodpusher into shreds as you live and breathe.

“And I you, pirate girl. Spider girl.”

Her eyes gleam, gleeful, even as she ducks her head.

“My girl.”

“My warrior, then,” she says, slyly, laughing, and holds your hand tighter.

Her forehead is cool and damp from sea spray when you press a kiss to it. And she pulls away, not a second after, but you’re both young; you have time to settle into each other. You’ve got _all_ the time: enough for whatever you both want.

**Author's Note:**

> the prologue was beta'd by [ this person ](http://www.gigapause.com/profile/LeDonneIlVinoEIlCanto) who did a fantastic job and gets all my gratitude. i used the major character warning because two characters (and possibly more) who take a significant part in this story will die; however, their deaths are canon, if not the means by which they die. Thanks to presto and wow for supporting this fic, and to you, the reader, for reading. all of you are fantastic
> 
> because life is hectic right now, this fic will probably be slow to update. feel free to nag me about it as needed
> 
> for those of you who are new to my fics (all two of them lol) i live [ here ](http://half-a-league.tumblr.com) most of the time. if you have questions, concerns, or just want to chat, feel free to drop me a line--> anon is _always_ on


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